Ocean Centre students visit the Amur Tiger Centre

15 June 2018

About 250 schoolchildren from all over Russia who are studying at the Ocean National Children’s Centre have visited the Amur Tiger Centre, where they learned what is being done to preserve and increase the Amur tiger population.

First, members of the Tiger Cub and Ocean Squadron teams watched a film about the centre’s activities and the release of tigers into the wild following rehabilitation.

The children could also see and touch GPS collars that are attached to the tigers before they are released into the wild taiga, as well as camera traps, portable video recorders and a quadcopter.

“Many of the Ocean Centre students live in the tiger’s habitat, so they will be able to raise public awareness of the tiger, which is part of our country’s heritage,” said Sergei Aramilev, General Director of the Amur Tiger Centre. “People often cause damage to their natural environment because of their ignorance and failure to appreciate its value.”

The students said that the visit to the centre proved to be much more interesting than they expected.

“I liked the lecture a whole lot, to say the least,” said Danil Chernov, a student from the Primorye Territory. “I was so excited by what I saw that I want to take part in the tiger conservation project.”

The Amur Tiger and Ocean centres have been partners for five years now. During this period, Amur Tiger employees have visited young environmentalists to tell them new stories about Amur tigers, show captivating films and demonstrate professional nature protection equipment.

“It’s important to us to teach the young generation to take care of the Amur tiger, the symbol of the Primorye Territory and the environment in general,” said Leonid Zaika, an environmental project manager at the Amur Tiger Centre. “Now and then I felt as if I was engaged in a constructive discussion with professional biologists and zoologists, rather than children aged between 11 and 16.”

The Ocean and Amur Tiger centres are committed to maintaining friendly relations in the future. Children will be fascinated to meet hunting watchdog staffers, who patrol the forests in the Primorye Territory every day keeping order in the tiger’s habitat, as well as Tiger Team students, who are improving environmental paths at the Lazovsky and Sikhote-Alin nature reserves.